Developmental control
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We have been away for … years! Now we are resuming posting on the life and science at the Casares lab.
09/10/26. Fer presented work, done in collaboration with Ale Cuetos (UPO), at the Biology for Physics meeting, held in Barcelona.
You can read more in the paper describing the packing regularities of an usual fluid containing “cell-like” particles.
02/10/26. Ernesto Sánchez-Herrero’s Jubilee. Ernesto (left) retired this summer and we held a party to pay homage to him: his career and his person. Ernesto has been a great mentor to all his students (in the picture, Fer Casares and Bea Estrada, Ernesto’s first PhD students). The contributions Ernesto has made to Developmental Genetics are many and important. Among the most relevant, perhaps, were those in which he discovered that the Drosophila bithorax complex hosted only three (HOX) genes -and yet, this three-gene complex was responsible for the morphological and functional specialization of part of the thorax and the whole abdomen of the fly- a discovery he made while still a PhD student in Ginés Morata’s lab. Ernesto went on to investigate how these genes were regulated in time and space and work during the building of the fly. HOX genes like those in Drosophila are in charge of the diversification of body plans of all animals. For a full list of Ernesto’s papers, check here. If you wish to have a look at the Investigación y Ciencia article on the bithorax complex (review in Spanish), you can access the PDF here. (beside, the first page of the paper)
30/06/26. A new paper, fruit of a wonderful collaboration with the Escudero (US/IBIS, Seville) and Pichaud (UCL, London) labs, in which we describe how the developing epithelium that gives rise to the fly eye organizes itself as supracellular mesh that helps controlling the fine curvature of the adult eye, which is essential for its vision. This is a natural realization of what engineers call a “metamaterial”. You can read the press release notes here or here. And the full paper following this link.
02/03/26. The lab has initiated a project to achieve accurate automated nuclear segmentation from confocal images of the very densely packed Drosophila epithelia. With the invaluable help from Alejandro Campoy (centre), from CABD’s ALMIA.
26/02/26. Tomás’ paper on the comparison of the Drosophila and Episyrphus eye GRNs is out. A significant expansion of the compound eye GRN with predicted new regulatory interactions, and a resource to investigate eye-associated potential enhancers. Check out the paper here. For a lay audience summary, read the press release.
The developing eye epithelium of the marmalade fly, Episyrphus balteatus.
31/10/25. Some of the people attending the workshop “Biological Languages”, organized by Jordi Gómez in Granada under the auspices of the IPBLN and LifeHub/CSIC.
06/10/25. Celebrating Ana Chuan’s birthday (with Miguel inserted). Ana spent a research stay in the lab working on the role of Lozenge. JuanMa, from the Marcon lab, joined us.
And the lab according to Ana Chuan!
21/07/25. Tomás Navarro defends his PhD thesis with flying colors.
26/06/2019. Scientists at Work!
02/03/18: Nico Posnien visited the lab. Here discussing with Max eye size control.
14/12/17. If you are interested in finding out how organ size is controlled during development and maintained after regeneration, and how size changes arise during evolution, apply for a Juan de la Cierva postdoctoral contract to work in our lab.
Screenshot
Please, send informal enquiries before December 30 to fcasfer@upo.es
12/12/17. Xmas lunch and drinks
08/09/17. Isabel Almudí and Fer Casares attended this year’s EVODEVO UK meeting at the Natural History Museum, London. Great science!
21/08/17. Meet Amer, former master student in the lab, first person at Biology Open
12/07/17. Julia Cantisán defended her graduation work on the fly eye GRN -done under MC Lemos with us as collaborators- today, obtaining 10/10 -“super work” and “impecable presentation” were some of the compliments from the committee. Well done, Julia!
03/07/17. Juan Muñoz is back in the lab to work on Bombus visual system -and brought along a bumblebee hive!!!
06/17. Antonio Ruiz, a mathematician, recently joined the CABD to help some of our groups. Currently he is working on fractal branching patterns, growth and regeneration!
Congrats Marta Neto for a wonderful thesis defense and thanks for your many contributions to the lab. In the picture, with (from left): Stein Aerts, Eduardo Moreno (herself; myself, proud), Paulo Pereira, Raquel Seruca and Pedro Rodrigues.
15-18/05/17. Santos Rojo, Celeste Pérez (left) and Adriana Aracil (right), experts on Syrphids (hoverflies) from University of Alicante visited the lab for a few days. We learnt a lot from them -and we hope to be able to continue working together. Syrphids are a megadiverse fly group with very interesting biology.
11/05/17. Diana from the lab, at the Sevilla Science Fair, representing the CABD and demonstrating the swarms of curious people the wonders of developmental biology!
09/05/17. Beatriz and Juan, from the Rodríguez-Gironés lab (EEZA, ALmería) will spend a week in the lab doing gene expression analysis on Bombus (the bumblebee) using in situ hybridization, with Isabel Almudí’s help.
24/04/17. With Dr. Jannik Vollmer, at ETH (Basel), after his PhD defence. Congratulations Jannik and Dagmar
21/04/17. Julia Cantisán, from the school of Physics/Materials Engineering, doing experiments for her theoretical studies of the fly eye gene regulatory network!
The Department of Gene Regulation and Morphogenesis, where the Casares lab belongs, has been named “Maria de Maeztu” Unit of Excellence. This award will allow GEM to recruit a number of new PIs, postdoctoral and predoctoral researchers to investigate the mechanisms of Decision Making in Cell Collectives (DMC^2). Stay tuned for more news!!!
Fer Casares presented lab work on “Eyes, large and small: variation of eye size in Drosophila and beyond” at the Modeling Growth and Form workshop, Mathematical Biosciences Institute (MBI), Columbus (Ohio) (https://mbi.osu.edu/event?id=1024).
New paper from the lab on eye size control, with the Iber lab! Check it here!
Coffee after Xmas lunch (Diana still in NYC and Chiara back to Italy for Xmas break).
The First meeting of the (order of the) SITH (Scientists Investigating the Hoverfly) took place on Dec 12, 2016. Here is a picture of all the Lords and Ladies…
Looking for a postodoctoral position?
The Cloeon Team has just expanded! Adrián (left) and Isabel (right) have joined the core formed by Carlos & Isabel.
Nov 15: The sex of cells. Male and female photoreceptors (as marked by Msl-2). Nice staining by Max Sánchez-Aragón (nuclei in blue, Msl-2 in red).
Two new members of the Casares lab, Ana Alcaina and Chiara Genovesse just joined the lab this October. Ana will be working of brain wiring and ocelli and Chiara will find out why Episyrphus has such huge eyes. Welcome both!
Why Flies are fascinating, click here. And meet the Dipterists forum, UK
Sep 29: Laura Cara joins the lab as undergraduate intern. Welcome, Laura.
Sep 28: Amer defended his master thesis in Florence and got 110/110, cum laude and congratulations from his committee. Well done Amer!!
Sep 15: Our latest publication, with the Iber lab, on the integration of gene action with growth during eye development in PLOS Computational Biology. Don’t miss it:
“A Model of the Spatio-temporal Dynamics of Drosophila Eye Disc Development”
NHM Treasures: butterflies collected by Alfred Russel Wallace himself!!!!!! Thanks David Lees.
Marta Neto’s research published in Develomental Biology: a story of derailed progenitors and their addiction to Dpp/BMP2, click here.
Fer Casares has spent two weeks at the Natural History Museum, London (@NHM_London) (August 2016), as a Synthesys felow, to explore the quantitative (and qualitative) differences in the ocellar complex across higher Diptera, with curator Daniel Whitmore’s (@dwhitmore79) expert guidance. Exceptional.
With Dan, Duncan and Paul 
With Dan, Erica, Theresa and Paul 
Thank you all! (@NHM_Diptera)
Isabel presented her research on Cloeon at http://2016uppsala.evodevo.eu/ (July 26-29, 2016).
July: Isabel and Carlos have raised the F2 generation of lab-reared Cloeon dipterum.
Today (May 31) Amer went back to Florence after his masters stay in the lab. Great job done and good luck (now, Amer, you have to write the master thesis!)
With Jesús Fernández (hiding) and Alexandre Piccini (with headphones) @ ReDevNeural meeting (May 27)
Some Group Meetings are tougher than others in the Casares lab…. (May 24)
Our paper on morphological constraints derived from a gene network structure -of ocelli- is out in Development, Genes & Evolution. With Daniel Aguilar-Hidalgo (April 04).
On growth laws of the eye -paper published already online in Development. Together with Dagmar Iber‘s group (March, 10)
Immunostainins of Episyrphus tissues are coming out wornderfully (check out this mitotic epithelial cells by Isabel Almudí) (February, 18)
Our exploration of gene network constraints on morphological evolution investigating the Hh-steered ocellar GRN is now at http://biorxiv.org/content/early/2016/02/17/031948